The year's finest relationship drama so far
Karen (Annette Bening) enduring a sad life of regret. (Sony Pictures Classics)
Mother and Child
Running time: 126 minutes
MPAA rating: R (profanity, extreme adult situations, nudity)
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Last year it was "Precious," the gritty drama of a teenager ravaged by relatives and her environment. Before that, "Slumdog Millionaire" took us to India and the dichotomy of back alley slums and a crooked, but glitzy TV game show.
There may be other well-conceived gems coming along in 2010. For now, though, my money is on "Mother and Child," an edgy drama with the emotional juice of "Precious" served with a wry, cruelly comic "Six Feet Under" kicker.
Writer-director Rodrigo Garcia, who directed a half dozen "Six Feet Under" episodes (as well as "The Sopranos"), began, he has said, with a notion of two strangers who longed for each other. He lights up his screen with a kick-in-the-gut drama about three women all deeply affected with adoption.
In the most creative opening credits I've seen in a while, a 14-year-old girl shyly kisses a boy. Before the credits conclude, she has gotten pregnant, given birth and given up her child by adoption.
Without any fanfare whatsoever, Garcia cuts to a 50-year-old woman startled out of her sleep. Karen (Annette Bening) has spent 37 years regretting the choice to give her baby away. Irritable and difficult to reach, even when it comes to her elderly mother (Eileen Ryan), Karen writes vigorous letters that will never be mailed to the daughter she has never known.
Garcia, born in Colombia but who grew up in Mexico, is no slouch when it comes to writing strong scenes about women. "Nine Lives" featured nine women at crossroads of their lives in 2005. "Mother and Child" hones in on three.
In addition to Bening, a three-time Oscar nominee ("Being Julia," "American Beauty," "The Grifters") and one of the finest actresses of her generation, Naomi Watts heats up the screen with calculating sexual exploits. She also chills it with moments of cold, playful devious emotional maneuvering.
Watts, an Academy Award nominee for "21 Grams" in 2003, takes on Elizabeth, a sharp lawyer who glides through life like a ravenous shark. No one in Elizabeth's path is safe, and that includes her decidedly older, widowed law firm boss (Samuel L. Jackson) and two overly nosy neighbors.
Elizabeth has a festering hole in her soul. She was given up at birth and has spent her life taking it out on those around her.
The third central woman character, Lucy (Kerry Washington, good two years ago in "Lakeview Terrace"), is looking to adopt a baby. She's eager and her husband (David Ramsey) says he's keen on the idea. But trouble is festering there as well.
There's one tiny hiccup in Garcia's script. And it's a minor one. Unless the various elements in this Los Angeles-set heart-breaking (at times) drama don't exactly follow the same time line, two key dates are slightly out of sync.
Otherwise, "Mother and Child" dazzles not only as a tale of women in crisis, but as the gripping story of modern-day relationships in an ever-changing society.
Film critics learn early on that false moments, those deviations of the parameters set by the story or characters, will take them out of a movie.
"Mother and Child," one of the finest movies of the year so far, has none.
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